Bitcoin ATM creator moves to Switzerland citing “Banking Struggles”

Lamassu, the Bitcoin automated-teller machine (ATM) producer, has now moved to Switzerland, citing “regulatory issues” in other countries, according to a Medium post published on Jan.1

The company will now be officially called as Lamassu Industries AG. The reason it stated for moving to Swiss Canton of Lucerne is that it wants “to be in a place where rules are well defined, and regulators are pro-innovation.”

In the post, Lamassu’s co-founder Zach Harvey revealed that the company had been bankless last year, and was also struggling to maintain a bank account, Harvey also added:

“We must have been rejected by fifteen banks just because we manufacture terminals for Bitcoin.”

Out of the 433 Bitcoin ATMs Lamassu has across the world, seven of them are installed in Switzerland. Another exciting reason for choosing Switzerland is that the country allows Bitcoin fans to buy bitcoins with train tickets at more than 1000 machines in the country.

Switzerland is well known for a crypto-friendly approach and has its own version of blockchain Silicon Valley in the city of Zug. In December last year, Zug was ranked as the fastest growing tech community in Europe.

According to a report published by CV Venture Capital in October 2018, the top 50 blockchain and cryptocurrency companies in Zug, accounted for $44 billion combined. The top five startups were worth more than $1 billion in market capitalization.

Harvey was excited about starting the project in the country, he said in his post “Just as we arrived in Switzerland we had a nice chat with a small bank in Canton Aargau and now we have a full account at a bank that is completely aware of our business model and happy to have us on board.”

Also adding that there will be a cryptomat (Bitcoin ATM) installed in their headquarters at the start of this year.

In the past, major cryptocurrency related companies have moved to more friendly locations. In May last year, BitBay, formerly known as the largest crypto exchange had to suspend activities in Poland, because the banks weren’t ready to cooperate with the company.

Harvey concluded the post stating that, as this being company’s first community project, Lamassu Team will be starting a monthly meetup dedicated to ideas of privacy, free speech, free markets, decentralization, and cryptoanarchy.

As Switzerland is starting to encourage banks to work with crypto related companies, we can’t think of it as something great to come. With this one question arises, how long can Switzerland serve as an excellent location for a business like Lamassu to operate in?